Breadcrumbs

Glen Canyon Group, Sevier Basin and Kaiparowitz Bench

General Setting

The Glen Canyon Group is developed in the subsurface in the Kaiparowitz Basin area in south-central Utah in the southwest part of the Colorado Plateau. It is also present in the subsurface in the east part of the Sevier Basin, a foreland basin in southwestern Utah, and the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah (U.S. Geological Survey, 1996). The Glen Canyon Group encompasses the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, Kayenta Formation, and Wingate Sandstone. These stratigraphic units consist mainly of clean, well-sorted eolian sandstones (Stanley and others, 1971; Kocurek and Dott, 1983; However, the Kayenta Formation contains sandstone with various amounts of siltstone, mudstone, claystone, and limestone (U.S. Geological Survey, 1996). The top seal is represented by the Carmel Formation, part of the Carmel-Twin Creek confining unit. The Carmel Formation, consisting of mudstone and evaporites, is present throughout the southwestern Colorado Plateau and the Sevier Basin (Wright and Dickey, 1963; Imlay, 1967; Kocurek and Dott, 1983).

Information Search and Selection

A wide variety of sources of aquifer data for the Glen Canyon Group include, in order of amount of information available, Freethey and Cordy (1991), Freethey and others (1988), The U.S. Geological Survey (1996), Hood and Danielson (1981), Hood and Patterson (1984), and Heilweil and Freethey (1992). Basic geologic data of the Navajo Sandstone and Carmel Formation were provided by Wright and Dickey (1963), Imlay (1967), Stanley and others (1971), Freeman and Visher (1975), Peterson and Pipiringos (1979), Taylor (1981), Blakey and others (1983), and Kocurek and Dott (1983). Major parameters for the Glen Canyon Group are briefly described, with notes pertaining to the suitability of this stratigraphic unit to be included as a data source.